Redgrave: “Doctor Who Is Like Joining MI5!”

What can you ask an actor when they have to be more secretive than a top-secret UNIT secret mission?

Well, it turns out…not much, really. At least in a new interview with Gerard Gilbert of The Independent, Jemma Redgrave is game to answer as much as she can. We know that she will be appearing in The Day of the Doctor as UNIT’s Kate Stewart, but she was pretty much sworn to secrecy by the Moffat mafia.

She tells interviewer Gilbert about her greatest secret:

“What can I tell you about the 50th anniversary? Practically nothing… When the job offer came in my agent said, ‘You mustn’t tell anybody about this,’ and I thought, ‘What am I going to tell the kids?’ It’s like joining M15.”

Redgrave genuinely seems excited to be part of the Doctor Who family – her character is the Brigadier’s daughter, after all – and was relieved that she could finally reveal a little about the 50th anniversary when some filming publicly took place in Trafalgar Square earlier this year:

“The news hit the Twittersphere and within half-an-hour of our being there, there were people with Tom Baker scarves on… people with TARDIS safety covers on their iPhones. It was a huge relief to be able to tell people.”

She was a fan of the show as a young girl in the 1970s and now gets to act right alongside the Doctor(s)…and his scary best enemies.

“My dad said he would take me to the BBC studios so I could see the Daleks – and that frightened me even more… Yes, I come across a Dalek [in The Day of the Doctor]. There was no acting required. It was a scarifying moment.”

She also reveals:

“I work with more than one Doctor… Oh, and I worked with more than one TARDIS as well.”

And that’s about all she can say about The Day of the Doctor! She does have some high hopes for Doctor Who‘s future, though:

“Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was such a loved character and I think people were very open to his daughter making an appearance and, hopefully, touch wood, making more appearances in the future. I think Peter Capaldi is a very exciting prospect as the new Doctor, so that would be wonderful.”

It sounds like Jemma Redgrave has very much enjoyed her Who appearances, and would come back at the drop of a hat. Kasterborites, would you like to see her back, possibly yelling “Five rounds, rapid!” to some soldiers?

Drew has been a fan of Doctor Who ever since he flipped through the channels late one night and saw a girl blowing up an army of funny robot men with nothing but a slingshot and some old coins. He currently lives somewhere in the woods of Missouri with his beautiful wife Barbara.